Screening of effective doping in PbF2 for introducing scintillation light

Low cost doped PbF₂ crystal is an attractive material for the homogeneous hadronic calorimeter (HHCAL) detector with dual readout function for both Cherenkov and scintillation light. Screening of effective doping in PbF₂ for introducing scintillation is a very great challenge. In the present work, a main emission band at about 550 nm has been found in the as-deposited multilayer PbF₂ and CsI(TI) films {3x[PbF2(193.5nm)/CsI(TI) (100nm)]/PbF2(193.5nm)}, which is attributed to the radiation of localized excitons around TI⁺ ions. Physically combining PbF₂ and CsI(TI) together at appropriate temperature to form a composite is one of considerable ways to obtain PbF₂-based dual readout material. Meanwhile Pb(Ca,Eu)F₂ powders were also prepared by solid state reaction, and it was found that Eu ions still exist in Eu³⁺ form even though Ar/H₂ reducing atmosphere or CaH₂ reducer was used in the preparation of samples, so it´s hard to obtain Eu²⁺ ions in doped PbF₂ samples. However, researches to introduce Eu²⁺ emission in PbF₂ will continue.